Tuesday, November 6, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, November 6, 1945

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov of Russia made a speech in Moscow in which he called for joint Allied control of Japan and that the secret of atomic energy be shared. It was the first time that a high official of the Soviet Union had made such a suggestion with regard to nuclear energy. He also stated that the formation of blocs in Western Europe would not be conducive to a peaceful Europe. He favored joint collaboration of the nations which had won the war.

Molotov pointed out the destruction of Russia by Germany by way of asserting that soon the war criminals would begin to pay the penalty at Nuremberg, stating a series of statistics, including 25 million Russians rendered homeless, 6 million buildings destroyed, and 7 million horses killed. He did not, however, apparently state the number of Russians killed or wounded in the fighting.

In China, the three primary towns occupied by U.S. Marines, Tientsin, Peiping, and Tsingtao, were each reported to be orderly, and, with the exception of Chingwangtao, it was believed that Government forces and police could maintain order, thus freeing the Marines to leave on schedule by December 5. Strong U.S. public opinion against American troops becoming involved in a Chinese civil war, thought likely to erupt by January 1, was one of the motivating factors in getting the Marines out as soon as possible.

In Tokyo, General MacArthur ordered the immediate dissolution of Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Yasuda Zaibatsu, the four leading family businesses in Japan. The reason for the move was to crush the Zaibatsu monopolies on Japanese industrial production and open up the economy.

UMW leader John L. Lewis and CIO head Philip Murray exchanged hot words at the Labor-Management Conference in Washington. The issue was over the role of Mr. Lewis at the conference and his demand for UMW and the brotherhood of railroad workers representation among the four labor spots on the joint labor-management executive committee. The plan had been to provide two seats to AFL and two to CIO. William Green of AFL sided with Mr. Lewis.

Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin had addressed a letter to President Truman asking him to call a conference on the issue of peacetime conscription, similar to the Labor-Management Conference. The President responded that he believed the Congress to be the proper engine of authority to determine such action pursuant to his proposal for a one-year training period for all young men 18 or older out of high school.

In Washington, without forewarning, employees of the Capital Transit Co., responsible for streetcars and buses in the nation's capital, went on strike, leaving Washingtonians to walk or hitchhike to work after they realized the usual mass transit was not operating. Twenty-one percent of the 32,000 workers at the Pentagon were unable to report to work. Normal absenteeism was five percent.

The 26th entry in the series of articles by General Jonathan Wainwright tells of the Japanese refusal to allow him to send a message to President Roosevelt to appeal for food for his starving men. The refusal solidified his opinion that most of the Japanese were not human. The only exception was a lieutenant named Kusomoto, a discus thrower on the 1932 Japanese Olympic team at Los Angeles. He bought cigarettes for the men and furnished them with a small electric hot plate and coffee pot.

On June 9, 1942, a letter came from General Homma stating that all organized resistance of the Allies in the Philippines had ceased. From that point forward, they were to be treated as prisoners of war and would be transported to the prison camp at Tarlac, along Highway 3 out of Manila. General Wainwright and his men believed uniformly that things were going to become worse from that point forward.

As they were transported to Tarlac, General Wainwright made note of the utter devastation of northern Luzon, still quite intact when the Allies had pulled back toward Corregidor from Lingayen Gulf following the Japanese invasion. Arriving at Tarlac on June 9, they found overcrowded conditions in the camp, wooden bunks with no mattresses or springs.

They were informed that they were not to consider themselves the equals of their captors, that, if hatless, they must bow to any Japanese soldier, regardless of rank, and if wearing a hat, they would have to salute. General Wainwright first had to learn to bow before a sergeant, an experience which made him retch.

The diet consisted of rice with an ounce or two of pork or beef once every week or two. The digestive systems of the men had to undergo a complete transition from their accustomed Western diet to accept this regimen.

An enormous response had been received by the family being evicted from their Charlotte home, left without heat, following the story printed the previous day. Many people had offered to share their own quarters with the family.

Although no final decision was made, a State commission recommended that Mecklenburg County be combined with Union County to form a new judicial district, apart from Gaston County, to alleviate some of the congestion of criminal and civil court calendars.

The Marine captain and his bride, reported October 26, arrived safe and sound by taxi at Camp Pendleton, California, after a cross-country cab ride from LaFayette, Georgia, so that the captain would not be AWOL following his marriage in Georgia. The fare was $500.

Film actor Robert Taylor had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after serving for 27 months as a flight instructor and director of motion picture training films. Mr. Taylor was married to Barbara Stanwyck.

Whether he knew of the Robert Taylor who liked to write to The News on occasion of bootleg whisky is not indicated.

"Parking meters", from July 13, is now here.

On the editorial page, "The President Squares Off" remarks of the President's address to the confreres at the Labor-Management Conference, essentially instructing them to get together and work out their differences or prepare for drastic Federal controls.

"This was the disillusioned, slightly bitter voice of a man who is beginning to understand how he was sold out by the labor leaders and the industrialists who promised to deliver a Great New Day if they were just left alone."

The President was now receiving his primary counsel from outside the Congress, in whom he had reposited so much trust in the early months of his Administration. Bernard Baruch, whose conference with fourteen Congressmen is recounted this date by Drew Pearson, was giving the President advice, advocating Federal intervention in the labor snafu.

The President's having started the parley with a threat suggested his own lack of confidence in a cathartic outcome. Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach was too new in the position to enjoy yet the confidence of labor leaders, while business leaders did not trust the leadership of progressive Henry Wallace, Secretary of Commerce. Yet, each was, theoretically, the designated Government representative of the respective sides of the dispute.

The speech by the President, whether successful or not in getting agreement from the conference, set a new tone of leadership, which was going to be required in the post-war environment.

"The Voice and the Word" comments on the copperhead snake handling performance of Brother Shoupe at the Church of the Living God in Jesus' Name in Charlotte, finds that if the faithful continued to stream through the doors, he planned to remain through the winter.

In other locales, Kentucky and Virginia, the local law enforcement had shut him down as a menace to life and limb. But, he had so far been allowed with impunity to perform his acts of supreme faith in Charlotte, the local authorities being loathe to interfere with even such a peculiar and dangerous practice when justified on the literal word of the Bible, for interference having the potential for being viewed as abrogating freedom of religion.

The police had, however, drawn the line in the sand when it came to his positioning of a loud speaker outside the Church of the Living God in Jesus' Name, through which Brother Shoupe had sought to lure passersby into his demonstration. And, he had complied with that request, "convinced, apparently, that it would take more than a frown from the law to mute the Voice of Doom."

"A New Set of Morals" suggests that the United States, being new at power politics on the world stage, was stumbling along, feeling its way, conveying the while hypocrisy. The House had appended to the appropriation of 550 million dollars, the remaining U.S. commitment to the UNRRA fund to feed Europe through the winter, the requirement that any country which received the funds had to assure a free press. The Washington Post had found this requirement ironic, given that the executive session of the House which adopted the bill had been closed to the press.

Remarks the piece, the Post was considering an earlier era, when consistency at home and abroad had been expected and observed. No longer did that rule apply. It was now considered acceptable to insist that the Russians provide for free press in their zone of influence in Europe while no criticism was leveled at the British policy of press censorship in the Middle East.

The editorial asserts that it was likely to continue to be the course on which the country would be set, as morals became inevitably specialized when playing power politics, a differentiation being made between acknowledged friends and those, as Russia, of whom the country was not so sure.

"Our Government's left hand knows what its right hand is doing, and it ill becomes us to express surprise and dismay when we discover honest old Uncle Sam playing two hands in the international poker game."

From the Louisville Courier-Journal is printed a piece titled "Georgia Removes a Symbol", which discusses the appearance of progressive Governor Ellis Arnall of Georgia at the hearing for clemency of Robert Elliott Burns, author of I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang, subsequently the subject of a film, previously convicted for a $5 hold-up in 1922, after which he twice escaped from the chain gang to which he was assigned.

New Jersey had refused to extradite him on the grounds that he would be subjected to the cruelties he had described in the book and could be subjected to special vindictive treatment for having exposed the cruel practices. And as long as that situation persisted, it had subjected the Georgia penal system to national ridicule. Thus, resolving the dispute in this amicable manner was astute politically. Previous Georgia Governors, despite ample evidence of rehabilitation of Mr. Burns in the interim, had stubbornly refused to provide a pardon as long he refused to surrender, which he did.

Governor Arnall, in fulfillment of a campaign promise, had divested himself of the pardon power and handed it exclusively to the Parole Board. Hence, he took the unprecedented step of appearing at the hearing on behalf of Mr. Burns, and the Parole Board had agreed to grant clemency, remitting the remainder of the sentence, though stopping short of providing a full pardon, as Mr. Burns had admitted guilt in the original hold-up.

The editorial finds the action to have removed the last stigma attached to Georgia for its shameful past in association with maintenance of chain gangs.

A bit over twenty years later, Georgia, thanks to a chicken king and the little chickens who elected him Governor, would have to endure more national humiliation. It was during this chicken king's tenure as Governor that Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis.

Drew Pearson states that Bernard Baruch had told fourteen Congressmen that the country was hell-bent for inflation. He said that, with pent-up consumer demand from the war, it was imperative to get through the ensuing six to nine months without inflation, that maintaining a freeze on wages and prices was no longer a good idea. Mr. Baruch opposed tax reduction. The Government needed the revenue, and higher taxes reduced spending power, thus reducing the risk of inflation.

He disagreed with the president of General Motors that a hike in wages of thirty percent would mean necessarily a hike in prices by thirty percent. Price hikes, he stated, under such a scenario could be maintained at 8.33 percent.

Mr. Baruch also believed that accelerating demobilization was a mistake.

He agreed with future 1956 vice-presidential running mate to Adlai Stevenson, Congressman Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, that Cabinet members ought appear regularly before Congress to insure greater cooperation between the Executive and Legislative branches.

Among the others present at the discussion, in addition to Mr. Kefauver, were Congressmen Albert Gore of Tennessee, John Sparkman of Alabama, future vice-presidential candidate with Adlai Stevenson in 1952, future Senate Majority Leader from Montana, Mike Mansfield, future Senator and presidential candidate Henry Jackson of Washington, and Jerry Voorhis of California, to be defeated in 1946 by Richard Nixon.

Mr. Pearson next reports that Winston Churchill had been asked how he felt after his defeat on July 26 and he had responded that at first he felt terrible, especially for the fact of no incoming diplomatic cables daily as during the war and no ability to send out cables to correct matters askew, about which he read in the newspapers. Eventually, he went to the south of France and relaxed, painted several pictures, but continued to fret over the absence of cables, until he finally realized one day that he was no longer Prime Minister and that it was not his worry. He had felt better ever since.

Mr. Pearson notes that Winnie's physician had advised him to curtail his drinking and mind his diet.

Next, the column indicates that Representative Carter Manasco of Alabama, chairman of the House Expenditures Committee, had recently responded to the President's criticism for the committee's sloth on reporting to the floor the full employment bill championed by the President by telling Secretary of Treasury Fred Vinson during his testimony before the committee that the President could do on his own everything the bill sought, without having such a bill. Mr. Vinson appeared to disagree. Mr. Manasco also asserted that the bill as proposed would give the President authority to reduce the value of stocks and bonds, a contention also challenged by the Treasury Secretary.

Mr. Manasco stated that it was strikes which caused unemployment and so the President ought to do something to curtail strikes, to which Mr. Vinson replied that if there were full employment, the causes of the strikes would dissipate.

It was believed that the House would eventually pass the Senate version of the full employment bill and the unemployment compensation bill, but with less than the proposed $25 per week guaranteed compensation.

Marquis Childs discusses the mid-term elections a year away, that the Democrats would likely seek to run on the platform of loyalty to the President, a platform which was shaky, as the members of his own party were repudiating at present nearly everything the President had sought of them, especially the full employment bill and extension of unemployment compensation. Even should these measures clear committee, they were not by any means assured of passage, as absenteeism in the House was rampant, as many as a hundred members being absent on recent important roll calls.

Even as these measures were moving slowly through the committees, the Military Affairs Committee was pushing ahead legislation to restrict the political activities of unions.

Representative Slaughter of Missouri, a Democrat from Kansas City, had cast the deciding vote in the Rules Committee during the summer to prevent the Fair Employment Practices Commission from becoming permanent.

The situation allowed Republicans, with some probity despite their own contributions to the status, to sit on the sidelines and claim that it was the Democrats who were responsible for obstruction.

The rift in the Democratic Party, the division between the Southern and Northern Democrats, was not new; it had been happening under FDR and even before the New Deal.

"The time may not be far off when, under pressure of an economic crisis, these incongruous partners will split up."

A letter writer complains of the absence of parks and a zoo in Charlotte. She also wants to see a new auditorium. "Why don't this city begin to live up to her name, 'Queen City of the South?'"

Let us, perhaps, start with double checking that which we write to insure proper syntactical agreement, at least within some semblance of the rules provided by the King's English, Independence being susceptible to carriage too far.

Dorothy Thompson appears to foresee precisely the issue to come which surrounded the Cuban Missile Crisis: whether the missiles were defensive, as claimed by the Soviets, or offensive, as claimed by the United States.

She begins by asserting that if Prime Minister Attlee were coming to the United States with the intention of trying to convince President Truman to share the atomic secret with the Security Council of the U.N., then he might as well not waste his time. The President did not have that authority. It belonged to the American people. The international scientists who had developed it gave it to the American people in sacred trust and they asked now that it be used henceforth only for peaceful purposes, to avoid having it used to destroy most of the earth.

To give the secret to the U.N. was to hand it over to the Big Five powers, each of which insisted on being a law unto itself. Those who thought that such a status quo would produce a peaceful world were fit for a ward in Bellevue. "Atomic bombs distributed to the five corners of the globe would, of course, bring the end of this planet nearer. That would, indeed, be perfect peace." Under that scenario, each country's military leadership would simply make plans for first strike capability to avoid being destroyed—pentagonally speaking, we assume.

The Soviet Union had not called for the destruction of the bomb or the limitation of the use of atomic energy to peaceful ends, but rather its being shared. In that, there was something sinister. The Daily Worker criticized those wanting to strengthen the United Nations with international law to be enforced by an international police force. American policy was being described as imperialist and Fascist, especially with respect to the proposed compulsory peacetime military service. But there was no similar outcry against Soviet compulsory military service, extant for 25 years. Nor was there condemnation of a half-million member Polish Army, armed and commanded by Russians or Russian-trained Poles. Nor was there any criticism for the new Jerusalem Army of a half million commanded by a Russian agent, nor the new Russian armed Czech Army. Russian control of Silesian industry and the desire for internationalization of the industrial Ruhr of Germany were also without criticism from the Communist press. All of these Russian initiatives were deemed defensive, not offensive. Only the West was guilty, according to the Communist press, of offensive moves.

"The propaganda that monstrous armaments for one power are 'peace loving' and 'defensive' and for another are Fascistic, war mongering, and aggressive, is obviously insincere, and fraudulent, if not conspiratorial, criminal, and treasonable."

The rhetorical distinction nearly led to the extinction of mankind in 1962.

Did it not also help to fuel the madness which resulted in the acts of September 11, 2001?

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